The A2A Simulations Community

Hi all,

Just a small observation, when I made my first high altitude test with the P-40 with Accusim.
After reaching a high-enough altitude, the white smoke appears behind the plane, just like in the P-47 or the Spit of course. However, the smoke is appearing a bit too much forward of the plane. As a consequence, it is a little bit visible inside the cockpit, leading to "flashes". I use quotes because it's not as if the screen would turn completely white ! No, it's much more subte, like a quick variation of the cockpit light intensity, like when a neon light gets too old, see what I mean ?

I believe the solution would be to make the contrail smoke appear later behind the cockpit.
Of course, the other engine smokes from normal combustion don't cause any kind of problem.
Also, I'm now going to make another test flight, this time with the Spit, because I haven't tested it yet since the 1.2 Accusim update, so I'm goign to check if the contrail problem occurs with the Spit as well.

For information, I'm running Win7 64 with FSX Acceleration running in DirectX9 mode.

Ok, an update:

First, the Spit has the same problem.
Then I tested the P-47, and the problem occurs too.

Since I have installed some aircrafts since Christmas, including payware with auto-install, I'm guessing that perhaps my high altitude contrail effects have been modified ?

What is the contrail effect file that is used by the Accusim planes ? I would like to check the date of last modification on my hardrive, to see if this file has been modified by the 1.2 Accusim update, or if it has been updated in the previous week by one of my new addons...

Daube,
I am not at my pc, but look in your aircraft.cfg under [Effects]

Scott

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A2A Simulations Inc.

Daube,
there are uniquely named contrail fx files used on the Spit and P40. I didn't check the P47.

Just open the aircraft.cfg fiile(s) and search for "contrail". You will find an entry for the temperature
at which they will begin to be seen and further down in the file the entry in the Effects section.

Those effects may use a common default FSX bmp file which may have something to do with
what you are seeing. Perhaps a screenshot of what you are seeing might help someone
to make some sort of determination.

Paul

Thanks a lot for the answers.
I was afraid the effect was hardcoded into the accusim module, but if it's simply specified in the aircraft.cfg then I can find it.
I'll take a look at it tonight.

I've seen this as well with the Spitfire and now with the P-40 but thought it was something else on my system as I have so many other addons and tweaks. Don't recall seeing it on the P-47 but I haven't taken that up for a spin lately.

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I was flying the P-40 in the Pacific Northwest yesterday, down low over the Columbia River, and noticed what seemed
to be occasional "whips" of fog/cloud looking forward through the prop disc.

.This MAY be the effect you are seeing and MAY be something intended as regards the new modeling of the windscreen glass
physics. That hot engine up front, the cold glass and OAT outside.

Just tossing out a possibility here

_________________
Paul


i5-2500K @4.3Ghz OC - GA-P67A-UD7-B3 - 8GB Corsair 1600mHz

Gypsy Baron, thanks for the suggestion. I have checked and I confirm that the problem is NOT limited to the canopy. The smoke puffs are visible inside the cockpit.

I have recorded a video to show it. The resolution and FPS are quite bad, but the effect is clearly visible.
Also notice in the external view => the smoke appears around the propeller ! It's a bit too much forward, isn't it ?
Here is the video: http://sapdaube.free.fr/fsx/contrails_problem.wmv
The problem occurs both with and without the ENB bloom.
The contrail effects are all aircraft-specific, so they are not overwritten by any other addon.
This is strange...

Hello Daube,
I was looking at the aircraft.cfg file for the P-40 and noted that there are some smoke effects with
x,y,z parameters of 0,0,0 as well as some smoke effects placed further forward and to either side...those
would be the effects emitted from the exhaust stacks.

I don't have time right now as I'm about to go away from my SIM computer for a brief vacation but
my approach would be to set up a flight wjere these "flashes" are repeatable. save it, and then
go in an selectively "comment out" the various effect entries using a "//" at the beginning of the entry line.

I would first comment out the contrail entry to see if that is the effect that you are seeing causing the "flashes".
If not, go on to the smoke entries.

If it is the contrail fx, then it MAY be possible to reposition the emitters in the fx file itself to move
them further back.

If there is no determination or solution by the time I return and my schedule allows, I'll play
around with this at that time.

P.S. = be sure to back up, any files you intend to "tweak" before moving forward
Paul

Thanks for this advise, I thought about something like that without really daring to do it.
I'll play around with these effects in the coming days anyway.
Also, I have modified the P-40 aircraft.cfg file to replace the contrail effect with the default one (fx_contrail_l.fx), and the result is just the same, so the A2A effects are not the cause of the problem.

I wonder if this problem may be linked to my video card settings. I've played with the FSX profile in NVidia Inspector recently, and I know that some of those settings can have nasty consequences on textures sometimes. I'll investigate in this area too and report here as soon as possible. All my effects and corresponding textures are untouched, so I guess the problem is outside of FSX.

Gentlemen, I hereby confirm that the origin of the problem was not the Accusim module, the P-40 or the various FSX effects.

The problem was coming from my video card settings, more specifically the "texture filtering quality".
Recently, for testing purposes, I have modified via NVidia Inspector the settings in my FSX profile. One of this settings is the texture filtering, for which you get the following choices:
- High quality
- Quality
- Performance
- High Performance.

I had set it to "High Performance". The card would sacrify some texture handling to save performance, and this was causing an "incorrect" (not as good/precise as it should) display of the cloud puffs. Consequently, those clouds were appearing a bit too soon, and thus they were visible inside the cockpit, on all of my planes.

Setting back the parameter to "Quality" solved the problem.

Thanks for the update and the report on the source of that problem. Hopefully that
will help others prevent a similar issue.

_________________
Paul


i5-2500K @4.3Ghz OC - GA-P67A-UD7-B3 - 8GB Corsair 1600mHz

Daube,

Very nice. Thanks for taking the time to post this.

Scott.

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A2A Simulations Inc.